Our organization has received concerns from providers around patients with low math literacy having difficulty properly understanding fractional doses in the medication SIG. The way Epic compiles the SIG uses a numeric fraction and a plural unit (i.e. tablets). This has caused patients to take the incorrect dose of their medication.

Our IT team found on Galaxy the ability to translate the SIGs into patient-friendly doses. The Galaxy article calls out that the settings do not apply to doses that are volume based.

Current state:
Take 0.5 tablets (12.5 mg) by mouth daily

Proposed state with translation:
Take one half tablet (12.5 mg) by mouth daily

Prisma implemented this setting for fraction-based doses and immediately ran into issues. The setting does not allow restricting which units it applies to. Because of this ANY unit that was not mL was translated. An example of where this issue was seen is with Ozempic:

Example:
Inject one quarter mg under the skin every 7 days

We reverted the change to prevent further confusion and approached Epic about modifying the setting to allow specification of which units it would apply to. For example, we would likely include things like tablet, capsule, patch, suppository but not mg, g, unit.

Epic informed us that we are the first customer to ask for this ability and they would need the support of additional customers. If you would also be interested in this setting, please reach out to your Epic Willow TS and add your organization to QAN#7528783.

For questions reach out to Kyle Porter (kyle.porter@prismahealth.org).